Sean Penn Covers Esquire January 2013

With his new movie "Gangster Squad" set to hit theaters January 11, Sean Penn pitched in on promotions by covering the January 2013 issue of Esquire magazine.

The 52-year-old actor looked intensely handsome for the Nigel Parry shot front page while opening up about topics ranging from getting through his son's accident to his thoughts on love and divorce.

A few highlights from Mr. Penn's interview are as follows. For more, be sure to pay a visit to Esquire!

On the aftermath of his son's skateboard accident:
"Where he almost died. He had emergency brain surgery. This was before he turned eighteen — he's nineteen now. And when he was recovering, seeing the morphine go into him and give him relief created kind of a love affair for me with morphine and that usage of it."

On working with young actors:
"I don't know the young actors as well, I'm not as aware of who's out there, but when I think of the crew around my age: Daniel, Philip, Javier, Josh, Jessica Chastain — who is f------ Stradivarius — what a group! There's a group that could be in all the classic pictures right now. Like the classics of the seventies or the classics of the forties. I think of that group of actors and it's like, 'Gimme a camera, I got an idea!'"

On going through divorce:
"There is no shame in my saying that we all want to be loved by someone. As I look back over my life in romance, I don't feel I've ever had that. I have been the only one that was unaware of the fraud in a few of these circumstances blindly. When you get divorced, all the truths that come out, you sit there and you go, 'What the f--- was I doing? What was I doing believing that this person was invested in this way?' Which is a fantastically strong humiliation in the best sense. It can make somebody very bitter and very hard and closed off, but I find it does the opposite to me."